Posted
by
BeauHDon Wednesday January 11, 2017 @06:00AM
from the this-won't-end-well dept.

Hasbro, the toymaker behind Monopoly, is letting the public decide whether or not they should replace the game's iconic game pieces with new pieces inspired by pop culture and social media. CNNMoney reports: Gamers can visit the Vote Monopoly site and choose from more than 50 new options. The old tokens, including the thimble, top hat and Scottie dog, are also on the table. The voting takes place inside a digital house with shelves and furniture stocked with both classic and newfangled token options. Jazzy music plays in the background as you explore and take a closer look at the figurines. Some aren't too surprising. There's a horse, a sailboat, an airplane, a bike and a helicopter. Two of the stranger options are sliced bread and a fuzzy bunny slipper. Hasbro is offering up a number of tokens that may appeal to tech consumers. There's a cell phone that looks like it came out of the '80s, a television that looks very '50s, and a computer with keyboard that vaguely resembles the first flat-screen iMac. Internet denizens can also vote for a hashtag and emoji options, including a winking smiley-face, thumbs-up symbol, crying-laughing face and a Rich Uncle Pennybags version of an emoji face. Voting is open to internet users worldwide until January 31. The chosen tokens will be part of a fresh Monopoly game due to hit stores this summer, so think long and hard about whether you want to stare at a kissy-face emoji for the next decade or so. A special edition called Token Madness will offer the original tokens as well as the new winners.

Shouldn't really comment and give this article the air of publicity, but WTF? Perhaps they should change the name from Slashdot to 'things we read in the news section of our Hotwheels comic'. The headline isn't even true (except in the vaguest lying marketing bastard sense). Its the worst kind of 'regurgitate press release without activating brain' article.

Posting it here is clickbait. The submission is almost guaranteed to rile the slashbots up and lead to lots of comments along the lines of "O tempora o mores!", "Kids these days want to change all the old stuff for no reason!". Nevermind that the Monopoly makers have thought about shaking up the piece set for decades. When I was a teenager in the early 1990s, someone doing a survey for Hasbro in the local shopping mall stopped me and asked me to give my opinions of possible new pieces.

Posting it here is clickbait. The submission is almost guaranteed to rile the slashbots up and lead to lots of comments along the lines of "O tempora o mores!", "Kids these days want to change all the old stuff for no reason!". Nevermind that the Monopoly makers have thought about shaking up the piece set for decades. When I was a teenager in the early 1990s, someone doing a survey for Hasbro in the local shopping mall stopped me and asked me to give my opinions of possible new pieces.

Speaking of change for no reason, if a game maker has literally been interviewing consumers for decades regarding changing one of the more pointless aspects of a single game, then I only have one thing to say to Hasbro.

The tax theory was advocated as a way to ameliorate the natural consequences of land monopolies. Specifically targeted for that. Showing those consequences is the entire point of the game. Convincing people that land monopolies are bad was the main motivator.

We bought the pokemon version of the game for my son. I played it when I was a kid and we thought it would be neat to revive it in some way. After playing a couple of games I realized that if you get Boardwalk and Parkplace (renamed Nidoking and Nidoqueen) in the pokemon version there is no way you can lose. Once you put hotels on these things you basically bankrupt anyone. I never realized how unbalanced such a mature game was. Anyway, to your point, it is a horrible game but the premise is good.

We bought the pokemon version of the game for my son. I played it when I was a kid and we thought it would be neat to revive it in some way. After playing a couple of games I realized that if you get Boardwalk and Parkplace (renamed Nidoking and Nidoqueen) in the pokemon version there is no way you can lose. Once you put hotels on these things you basically bankrupt anyone. I never realized how unbalanced such a mature game was. Anyway, to your point, it is a horrible game but the premise is good.

Posting it here is clickbait. The submission is almost guaranteed to rile the slashbots up and lead to lots of comments along the lines of "O tempora o mores!", "Kids these days want to change all the old stuff for no reason!". Nevermind that the Monopoly makers have thought about shaking up the piece set for decades. When I was a teenager in the early 1990s, someone doing a survey for Hasbro in the local shopping mall stopped me and asked me to give my opinions of possible new pieces.

Erm... wouldn't it just be (yet) another edition of monopoly. I mean we've got Monopoly, Australian Edition; Monopoly, Southampton Edition; Monopoly, Middle Earth Edition; Monopoly, Bagdad Edition. I'm supprised there isn't a version set in Paris Hilton's colon (gord knows enough people have seen it).

I mean they've been milking different versions of monopoly for the better part of 30 years. Why is anyone surprised?

I'm certain the traditional version of monopoly will be around to see my nephews kids ha

Slashdot seems to be pretty shallow recently, but at least they've stopped posting political troll-bait headlines. Those things caused a *lot* of toxic fights in the commentary. Slashdot popularity has gone way down [alexa.com] because of this. Contrast with Hackaday, which had an editorial mandate to avoid political articles altogether and has largely weathered that storm fairly well [alexa.com].

It's unfortunate, because Slashdot has the capability to get user feedback on its product strategy, but doesn't. When you're running a c

Implementing moderation/voting on front page stories has been a feature request since forever and was always routinely ignored by the site founders and the lackeys that served them as editors.

The larger problem with Slashdot anymore is that it's run as tech-flavored general news site anymore. The only thing really going for it is its fairly unique commenting and moderation scheme, which largely weights the site's value as a discussion forum far over its editorial content, which is pretty much just it's nea

Posting it here is clickbait. The submission is almost guaranteed to rile the slashbots up and lead to lots of comments along the lines of "O tempora o mores!", "Kids these days want to change all the old stuff for no reason!". Nevermind that the Monopoly makers have thought about shaking up the piece set for decades. When I was a teenager in the early 1990s, someone doing a survey for Hasbro in the local shopping mall stopped me and asked me to give my opinions of possible new pieces.

They already have changed the pieces. My set has wooden pieces, different colors and shapes. No scotty dog, top hat, iron, wheelbarrow, etc.

Shouldn't really comment and give this article the air of publicity, but WTF? Perhaps they should change the name from Slashdot to 'things we read in the news section of our Hotwheels comic'. The headline isn't even true (except in the vaguest lying marketing bastard sense). Its the worst kind of 'regurgitate press release without activating brain' article.

In/.'s brave new world, emojis and hashtags are now what pass for 'tech' as well as 'stuff that matters'

The new editors are much more... "active" about using slashdot as a blog, instead of approving user submissions. Of the 15 front page stories right now, only 7 are user submissions. The rest were written by various editors or their bosses (or their sponsors).

You fraudulently bundle thousands of worthless loans together and sell them as Grade AAA investments to the unsuspecting. Millions of hoi polloi lose their homes and retirements, and the country's economy is almost destroyed. Collect 10 Billion Dollars and stay out of jail.

And:

You purchase a thriving, cash-rich company with borrowed money. Use the company's cash to institute a stock-buyback plan to increase the value of the stock options you've given yourself. Ship most of the company's jobs to overseas sweat-shops, further increasing the short-term value of your stock. Sell at the peak, rinse, repeat.

And:

You inherit 20 billion dollars. Use your pocket change to buy a few U.S. Senators and get them to change the inheritance laws.

And:

You run a large corporation. Strong-arm local and state politicians with threats to move your facilities to another state or out of the country. Get out of taxes free.

All possible by un-regulations under the guise of regulations such as "Dodd/Frank", and other such.

Personally, as a Libertarian, I am all for Corporate death penalty, and the criminal prosecution of CxOs and entire board of directors for violation of the trust granted to them by their stakeholders. We don't need regulations if we use the criminal and civil laws that are already on the books. The problem was further exasperated by the "solution" which was "hey, lets use the same idiots that got us in this me

I don't know about "as always". I am one of those people who think we are better off without kings, because they always tend towards tyranny. I am also confused with "Conservatives" because I value the kinds of liberty they often claim (but rarely deliver). Likewise, I am confused with "Liberals" (though to a lessor degree) because I value the kinds of liberty they often claim (but rarely deliver).;)

I don't faithfully trust anyone. Period. All that power the Liberals are worried Trump might abuse, is the s

These are actually the cards you would produce if you were updating Monopoly to the 21st century. The original Monopoly game was supposed to be a socialist propaganda piece, getting less enjoyable as one person started winning, and it being almost impossible to recover once you start losing.

When you start building houses, never upgrade to hotels. Only build 4 houses on each lot. Soon the game will run out of houses (the game is designed to have a limited number of properties, 32 houses and 12 hotels) and no one will be able to build on their lots, since you cannot build hotels directly. Ta-daaa, monopoly achieved.

This is socialism. If Monopoly was a socialist propaganda, it fails right here, because that is not a failing of capitalism (which would build more houses as needed), but a failing of socialism and "central planning" (YOU CAN'T BUILD HERE)

Actually, the only system that allocates resources according to scarcity by need is... capitalism. By raising prices on scarce items, it promotes usefulness (and alternative) resources.

Once upon a time (briefly) Aluminum (refined) was very scarce. It was used in very limited ways, and many "rich" people bought all kinds of aluminum products because it was scarce. Demand increased and someone figured a better way to smelt the ore to get aluminum out easier, more efficiently, and it became a commodity, and a

It really says something that Americans liked it anyway; even if someone doesn't like playing it, they enjoy complaining about it. It worked out to be a brilliant analogy, even if it sucked as propaganda.

Well, that's always the problem with that sort of propaganda; most people want to win, if they only win 25% of the games they're not going to learn that winning is bad. The whole concept of that as propaganda is crazy. Yes, at the end of the game there is only one winner, everybody else loses. That only means it is viable as a game. Duh.

Please continue. These are way more fun. I laughed just as hard as when Calvin and Hobbes were playing monopoly. They made their own chance cards to. One of them read as "Defraud the bank. Computer scam diverse assets into your account. Collect $5,000."

Low numbers, but you get the idea. Chance cards really can spice the game up a bit...maybe they could bring about national disasters that destroy hotels on your property.

When you pass Go you would collect 1 BTC, with the current value of your stack of money determined by an extra roll of the dice. The Chance deck would include "Bitcoin exchange hacked, lose half of all money," "Civil forfeiture action, lose one hotel or three houses," "EPA closes down Electric Company," and "Intellectual property decision in your favor, collect 10 BTC." The Jail square would be replaced by Gender Change; if you land on it, you would have to replace your token with another token of your choosing, and the other players would have to just get used to that.

"Why are they changing the pieces?" is not the issue. "Why are they still producing this?" is the more pressing question. Are there not already more copies of the damn game available in charity shops (thrift stores for left-pondians) than there are ET cartridges excavated from the desert? Who keeps on and on buying new copies?

Played by the rules as written, it's a mediocre game at best. Played how most people want to play it from sketchy childhood memories, it's fairly dire. Either way, if you want to play boardgames with your family, pick one of the many thousands of titles available that are better than Monopoly. Even in mass-market stores, you can probably find half a dozen better than this. (Ticket to Ride, Scotland Yard, Pandemic, Dixit, Perudo, for common examples).

Don't all of the variations have their own pieces anyway? I know we have two sets - one is a very old French version I found at a flea market which is really cool (my wife used to be a French teacher) and the other is a Simpsons version. I've played it with my kids quite a bit. I kind of think it's a great move for them to make all the customized versions, it breathes a little bit of new life into the game. It's more relevant to buy a monorail stop instead of a railroad, or Burns Manor instead of Boardw

"Why are they changing the pieces?" is not the issue. "Why are they still producing this?" is the more pressing question.

Only to someone not stupid enough to already know the answer - because it's still selling in significant numbers.

Played by the rules as written, it's a mediocre game at best. Played how most people want to play it from sketchy childhood memories, it's fairly dire. Either way, if you want to play boardgames with your family, pick one of the many thousands of titles available that a

Exaggeration, hyperbole, and confusing a personal opinion with a law of nature... Man, you hit the trifecta there.

Uh... exaggeration and hyperbole are the same thing. How exactly can they make up two parts of a trifecta?

Anyhow, this is far from merely a "personal opinion." Monopoly has been criticized ever since it was originally rejected by Parker Brothers for game play that grew too long and tedious. They only picked it up after it became a minor "craze" in the mid-30s. It certainly had novel elements that made it appealing, but that doesn't mean it also didn't have serious flaws.

Only to someone not stupid enough to already know the answer - because it's still selling in significant numbers.

OK, sloppy on my part. More accurately, "why are people still buying this?".

Exaggeration, hyperbole, and confusing a personal opinion with a law of nature... Man, you hit the trifecta there.

No exaggeration. Are you aware how many modern board games there are in existence? BoardGameGeek have just over 88,000 games in their database. I will positively assert that pretty much any of the top 1000

You might want to read up on the actual history a bit more. Monopoly is based on a came called The Landlord's Game, which has two modes of play. In one, you won by constructing a monopoly, in the other you won by increasing the total size of the economy. The point was to illustrate how unconstrained capitalism would lead to monopolies and negative outcomes for most participants.

The modern version is a set of incremental changes to the 1933 game by Parker (later bought by Hasbro). This was a simplified version of The Landlord's Game, which eliminated the cooperative mode and left outright competition as the only objective.

One could play the iOS or Android versions of the game, where the bank never runs out of cash

About the pieces, one thing I don't like in the newer versions of the game - where the car (called Prius in the game) is replaced by a cat. I wouldn't mind if the cat was simply added, but wasn't too thrilled at Prius gone

Also, the game itself varies the difficulty level by loading the dice: even if one manages to get all the properties, it can still take a while before an AI opponent is taken down

Why doesn't Monopoly come with a starter set of four classic tokens, and then offer add-on token sets? There could be themed sets (co-marketed with McDonald's!), memorial sets, holiday sets, and rare Beanie Baby-like individual tokens that sell for hundreds of dollars in secondary markets. Has the owner of Monopoly missed the last 20 years of marketing innovation?

RIGHT? Brilliantly put. I'm not a Monopoly purist, but I don't like to see things that aren't broke, get fixed to get new 'interest'. The nostalgia around the classic pieces can be passed on in terms of why they were chosen, what they are about, which are most popular, ect. Then it doesn't tarnish the original, long-standing tradition of the game pieces. Add-on's seem a WAY better approach.

I get themed version of a game from a marketing perspective, but then what do all of us consumers have in the end?

Personally I'd prefer to see the original tokens being shipped, but sell new tokens to buy to use in the games. Maybe add some extras, but don't remove the originals. Don't really see a reason to change them. I wouldn't mind being able to buy extra tokens to use for current games I have, but I'll probably never not play as the dog...